Cypher is Neo4j’s graph query language that allows users to store and retrieve data from the graph database. Neo4j wanted to make querying graph data easy to learn, understand, and use for everyone, but also incorporate the power and functionality of other standard data access languages. This is what Cypher aims to accomplish.
Cypher’s syntax provides a visual and logical way to match patterns of nodes and relationships in the graph. It is a declarative, SQL-inspired language for describing visual patterns in graphs using ASCII-Art syntax. It allows us to state what we want to select, insert, update, or delete from our graph data without a description of exactly how to do it. Through Cypher, users can construct expressive and efficient queries to handle needed create, read, update, and delete functionality.
Cypher is not only the best way to interact with data and Neo4j - it is also open source! The openCypher project provides an open language specification, technical compatibility kit, and reference implementation of the parser, planner, and runtime for Cypher. It is backed by several companies in the database industry and allows implementors of databases and clients to freely benefit from, use, and contribute to the development of the openCypher language.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://neo4j.com/developer/cypher/cypher-query-language/